The Carnivalesque in Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel: A Bakhtinian Reading

Abstract

ABSTRACT Two contemporary novels, namely, Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men (2011) and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel (2020) are given a Bakhtinian reading in an attempt to trace the presence of carnivalistic elements in the two texts and to investigate their significance. As such, we argue in this paper that both novels are carnivalized in a way that does not only reflect the precarious, absurd nature of contemporary reality, but also serves narrative and esthetic ends. We also propose that even though these two novels are seemingly very dissimilar, they in fact have more in common than meets the eye. Their indulgence in the carnivalesque bridges partially, if not indeed wholly the gap between the otherwise divergent narrative worlds and establishes several channels of communication between them. The Bakhtinian reading of the two novels sheds light on the authors’ approaches to their texts which rely on a blend of the comical and serious. In consequence, the carnivalesque is evoked and the two authors benefit from its ambience of incredibility and implausibility to flesh out their takes on time, space, ideology and humankind.